At least 22 UN policemen and eight Nato troops were injured after a raid to retake a court seized by Serb demonstrators in the divided Kosovo's city of Mitrovitsa, BBC reported Monday.

Troops used teargas as they faced gunfire, stones and petrol bombs in the worst violence since Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence last month.

UN and Nato vehicles were set alight as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the court.

Three UN policemen and two Nato K-For soldiers have been hurt in an explosion, caused by a hand grenade.

Several protesters have also been hurt.

Earlier, some 100 UN police had arrested 53 Serbs in the operation to retake the UN court in a Serb-run part of the city.

A UN convoy transporting those detained in the raid was then attacked, and some of the demonstrators managed to escape.

UN police were ordered to withdraw, leaving Nato K-For troops to control the situation.

Many of the protesters who seized the court last week are said to be former staff who lost their jobs in 1999 at the end of the war in Kosovo, when it came under UN administration.

Last week, Serbs tried to take control of a railway line in the northern Kosovo.

In February, some 150 Kosovo Serb police officers were suspended for refusing to take orders from the ethnic Albanian authorities in Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

Most EU states and the US have recognised Pristina's unilateral declaration of independence.

Serbia - backed by its ally Russia - says the move is illegal and declared they will never take it.

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